The founder was in his eighties and his company was worth three billion dollars. He refused every normal way out and invented a new one.
Harder version: read this lesson at C1 level →
Look at each word. Say what you think it means. Then tap the card.
Tap a card to see the meaning.
Write one word from the cards in each gap.
1. She a small house in the mountains from her grandmother.
2. We old clothes to a local every winter.
3. Who this building? I want to speak to them.
4. In this country you pay a lot of on petrol.
5. Honesty is one of the most important in our family.
6. What is the of this meeting? Nobody seems to know.
1. inherited · 2. donate / charity · 3. owns · 4. tax · 5. values · 6. purpose
Read each part. Then answer the questions before you read the next part.
Yvon Chouinard never wanted to be in business, and he spent sixty years proving it — expensively.
He was a blacksmith and a climber. He started by making metal climbing equipment in a small tin shed and selling it from his car. From that, he built Patagonia into the most admired brand in outdoor clothing, while treating business itself with open suspicion.
The company used organic cotton when it cost real money to do so. From the 1980s it gave one per cent of all sales to environmental groups.
And in 2011, on the biggest shopping day of the year, it bought a full page in the New York Times. The page showed a photograph of Patagonia's own best-selling jacket. The headline said: Don't Buy This Jacket.
To Chouinard's genuine annoyance, sales went up.
Think of the decisions that cost money. Repairing clothes for free. Refusing fashion seasons. Paying for childcare in the 1980s. Telling customers to buy less. Each one was expensive proof that the company meant it.
Competitors chasing this year's numbers could not copy any of it without losing money.
On that reputation, Patagonia built the profits and the customer loyalty that most of the industry would trade its logo for.
By the 2020s the company was worth around three billion dollars. It was growing. It was profitable.
And it had one problem that no amount of awkwardness could solve. Its founder was in his eighties.
True or false? Click your answer.
1. Chouinard was enthusiastic about business from the beginning.
2. The advertisement told people not to buy the company's jacket.
3. The expensive decisions were easy for competitors to copy.
The normal choices were short, and Chouinard hated all of them.
Sell the company to a large group — and watch the mission become a marketing story.
Go on the stock market — and hand the mission to investors who ask about profit every three months. He had watched what that did to other companies with strong values, and he wanted none of it.
Leave it to the family — and bet a century of purpose on the character of grandchildren who had not been born yet.
He later wrote that there were no good options available. So the family would create its own.
In September 2022 they announced it. The ownership of Patagonia was cut into two very unequal pieces — but along the line between control and money.
The voting shares are only two per cent of the total, but they carry all the control. They went into the Patagonia Purpose Trust. This is a small body run by the family and their closest advisers, and it is legally required to protect the company's mission.
The other ninety-eight per cent — all the money — went to a new non-profit organisation called the Holdfast Collective, which fights the climate crisis.
Every dollar of profit not put back into the business — perhaps a hundred million a year — now goes to climate work, for ever.
The announcement was signed with a sentence written to be quoted: Earth is now our only shareholder.
True or false? Click your answer.
1. The family kept control of the company's direction.
2. The family kept the profits.
3. Patagonia was sold to a larger company.
The design is cleverest in what it makes impossible.
The company was not simply given to a charity — because one day a charity's trustees might be legally required to sell it to the highest bidder. It was not left to the family as wealth — although the family, controlling the Purpose Trust, kept something arguably more valuable than money: permanent control of what Patagonia means.
It can never be floated on the stock market. It can never be bought. It can never be inherited and slowly divided away.
Losing the mission was not discouraged. It was made structurally almost impossible.
Chouinard called it going purpose, rather than going public.
Then came the second reading, and it is fair.
Tax specialists pointed out, accurately, that this was also excellent planning for the family's money. Selling would have created a very large tax bill. Inheriting would have created another. Both were avoided — figures in the hundreds of millions were mentioned.
Also, the organisation receiving the profits is a type that is allowed to campaign politically. So a very large, permanent stream of money now supports political campaigning, controlled by one family, with no shareholders and no elections.
Both readings are true at the same time. That is what makes the case worth studying.
Chouinard solved the problem that defeats most companies built on values: the values live inside a person, and people die or sell. His answer was to move the values out of the person and into structure — trusts, share classes, legal documents.
What nobody knows yet is whether structure can hold what a person held.
A trust cannot found a company twice. It can only refuse to betray the first founding.
In fifty years, Patagonia will be run by people who never met Chouinard, controlled by paper he signed. Whether that produces a living mission or a beautifully preserved one — the honest answer is that we do not know yet.
True or false? Click your answer.
1. The structure means Patagonia can never be sold or floated.
2. Tax experts said the plan also saved the family a lot of tax.
3. Everybody agrees this was purely a generous act.
Every decision in this story was made for a reason. To retell it, you need the structures that answer the question why?
to + verb — the simplest and most common. → "He gave the company away to protect the mission."
in order to + verb — the same meaning, but more formal. → "In order to avoid a sale, he created a trust."
so that + subject + verb — use this when the person changes. → "He created a trust so that nobody could sell the company."
The rule that decides which one: if the two halves have the same subject, use to. If the second half has a different subject, you must use so that.
Negative purpose: use so that … not or to avoid + -ing. → "To avoid paying tax." (NOT for to avoid, NOT for avoid)
| Structure | Use it when… | Example |
|---|---|---|
| to + verb | same subject | He sold nothing to keep control. |
| in order to + verb | same subject, formal | In order to protect the mission, he acted. |
| so that + subject + verb | different subject | He acted so that his children could not sell it. |
| to avoid + -ing | a negative purpose | To avoid paying tax on a sale. |
| for + noun | before a noun, not a verb | The money is for climate work. |
Write to, in order to, so that or for.
1. He created a trust protect the company's mission.
2. He split the shares nobody could ever buy the company.
3. The family kept the voting shares keep control of the values.
4. Ninety-eight per cent of the shares went to a non-profit climate work.
5. avoid a stock market listing, he invented a new structure.
1. to · 2. so that · 3. to · 4. for · 5. In order to
Each sentence has one mistake. Say the correct sentence out loud, then check.
1. He gave the company away for protect the mission.
2. He created a trust for that nobody could sell it.
3. In order to the family keeps control, they held the voting shares.
4. He did it for to avoid tax.
5. She works hard for get a promotion.
1. He gave the company away to protect the mission. (for cannot go before a verb)
2. He created a trust so that nobody could sell it. (different subject → so that)
3. So that the family keeps control, they held the voting shares. (in order to cannot take a new subject)
4. He did it to avoid tax. (never for to)
5. She works hard to get a promotion. (same subject → to + verb)
Take your time. Short sentences are fine.
Tell me what Chouinard did and why. Six or seven sentences is enough.
Tell me about something you would want to protect after you — a business, a house, a tradition, a way of doing things.
How would you try to protect it?
One person says this was generous. Another says it was clever tax planning.
Take the side you disagree with, and argue it as well as you can.
Can rules on paper keep a company honest for a hundred years?
Or do you need the right people? Give a reason.